PV Specialist Thomas Bollmann

A career for and from renewable energy

Thomas Bollmann has made a career for and from renewable energy. He is the owner of Bollmann Elektrotechnik in the German city of Braunschweig. His company is responsible for the consistently reliable operation of PV plants. "We are just as much concerned about a plant from John Smith as we are about large industrial plants," says Bollmann. In addition, his services as a certified electrical engineer are in high demand all across Germany for claim adjustments and appraisals. To top it off, he is also an instructor for photovoltaics and heads the Solar Academy in Braunschweig.

Bollmann and his team supervise many exciting projects. We want to take a closer look at one of these projects, the Wolfsburg AG. The Wolfsburg AG was founded in the 1999. This is a joint venture between the city of Wolfsburg and the Volkswagen Corporation. Their common goal is to strengthen the Wolfsburg region as a place to live and do business. With around 140 employees, Wolfsburg AG has implemented a number of successful projects to improve the structure and to promote attractiveness of the city and its surroundings.

Thomas and his team monitor and maintain seven of the buildings that the Wolfsburg AG uses. How does an installation company with just five employees become a partner here? Thomas Bollmann laughs and says, "Coincidence." To be more precise, "it was from word-of-mouth." You don't gain a good reputation by delivering fast, cheap work. Quality is the most important thing, and word got around that Bollmann and his team deliver first-class work.

Thomas Bollmann himself has been working over a quarter of a century in the industry. "When I started in photovoltaics, one was almost viewed as a charlatan," he says. Thank God, those days are over. Bollmann continued to gain more experience and knowledge about the subject, which led to him developing his own tools. The creative spirit goes hand in hand with the will to innovate and gain deeper technical understanding. Equipped with his own tools, the Bollman team does troubleshooting and analysis. They have even built their own PV lab. Here, for example, they can examine individual modules for problems. For onsite troubleshooting, they have also developed a camera stand for electroluminescence analysis. This avoids having to disassemble the photovoltaic plant unnecessarily.

"We provide the full range of services for the Wolfsburg AG," he says: monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting. That is a challenging task since Bollmann manages PV roofs here alone with around half a megawatt output! Here he relies on the Solar-Log 1200, and the professional Solar-Log WEB Enerest™ portal. Together, the perfect tools for monitoring large solar industrial plants.

Solar energy and mobility with clean electricity - that is the future. It has already started in Wolfsburg at Volkswagen. The car is becoming electric. Volkswagen already sells a number of electric models and is expanding the number of models. 70 billion euros is being invested in e-mobility within the next five years. 80 new models will be brought to the market within a few years.